Opportunities and awards

Grants open for applications, plus winners of GradFoto award, finalists of National Designer Award and National Graduate Showcase, and more!
A photographic work depicting two Asian men with eyes closed and a leafy branch reading between them, rendered on grid paper.

This week’s opportunities

Awards and competitions

2025 Art Music Awards

APRA AMCOS and AMC members are invited to put forward online nominations in support of art music pioneers who have made waves through performance, new work (including digital performance, broadcast or commercial release) or other musical ventures. Finalists and winners are selected from nominations by industry peers and audience members alike. Nominations are welcome across 14 categories for works, performances and projects from 2024.
Nominations close 26 February; learn more and nominate.

2025 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize

Artists across Australia are invited to enter the 2024 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, which includes a $35,000 Professional Art Prize, a $7500 Indigenous Emerging Artist Prize and a $7500 Emerging Artist Prize.
Entries close 5 March; learn more and enter.

2025 AIR Awards

Nominations are now open for the 2025 AIR Awards, including the Independent Mix, Studio or Mastering Engineer of the Year. This award will recognise the efforts of an Australia-based mix, studio or mastering engineer who worked on a member single, EP or Album released during the eligibility period (1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024).
Nominations close 10 March; learn more and nominate.

Adelaide International Guitar Competition

A prize pool of $10,000 is up for grabs in the 2025 Adelaide International Guitar Competition and the opportunity to perform at a future Adelaide Guitar Festival. Entrants from around the world are welcomed.
Applications close 2 April; learn more and apply.

2025 Furphy Literary Award

The Furphy Literary Award encourages Australian writers everywhere to roll up their sleeves and prepare a short story to enter this year’s competition, responding to the perennial theme ‘Australian life in all its diversity’. The top 16 stories have the opportunity for publication plus a $15,000 first prize.
Entries close 30 April; learn more and enter.

Commissions

Kumangka at Broadview Public Art

City of Prospect is seeking artists/artist teams to create a public artwork integrated within Kumangka at Broadview Community and Sports Hub. Expressions of interest from artists with a proven record of working with First Nation communities and/or a willingness to engage with Kaurna communities to create and install public art that will engage the Broadview and wider Prospect communities are invited.
EOIs close 21 February; learn more and apply.

Grants and funding

Contemporary Music Development Grants

Funding of up to $30,000 is available to support artists and acts creating new and original contemporary music. Costs associated with developing new music, collaboration, recording (including mixing and mastering), pressing, manufacturing and releasing, marketing and promotional activity is eligible to be supported under the grant.
Applications close 3 February; learn more and apply.

Moonee Valley Biannual Community Grants (Vic)

Moonee Valley City Council’s Biannual Community Grants Program offers funding of up to $10,000 to local individuals and groups helping make the municipality a better place to live, work and play. Biannual Community Grants are available for projects across several streams, including: Community Projects, Climate Action, Arts and Events, Business Projects, First Peoples and Social Support Grants. 
Applications close 2 March; learn more and apply.

City of Sydney Creative Grants (NSW)

Creative grants program provides financial, in-kind (non-monetary) or waived fees support for projects and initiatives that contribute to Sydney’s cultural life, provide opportunities for creative participation, enliven public spaces and strengthen the sustainability and capacity of the cultural and creative industries. Projects must take place from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026. An online briefing session will be held on 5 February 9.30am.
Applications close 11 March; learn more and apply.

Call-outs

Ballet Theatre Queensland Cinderella

Queensland’s youth ballet company is welcoming audition applications from dancers aged eight and above for its upcoming season of Cinderella.
Applications close 6 February for auditions on 8 February (Juniors) and 9 February (Intermediates/Seniors); learn more and apply.

SXSW Sydney 2025

Submissions are open for the third annual SXSW Sydney, taking place from 13-19 October. Creatives are invited to share ground-breaking ideas, from tech and innovation, business and leadership, marketing and media to culture, lifestyle and creative industries.
Submission dates vary; learn more and submit.

2025 Queensland Music Awards People’s Choice voting

Voting is now open for the People’s Choice Awards, including categories Festival, Metropolitan and Regional Venue of the Year and Album of the Year.
Voting closes 16 February; learn more and vote.

Indie-mill (SA)

Windmill Theatre Co is offering a new program to makers for all-original work that includes two weeks of creative development, a fee of $1500 per person per week in an artistic team (maximum six people), super, studio space, a props and costume budget, an assigned stage manager and more. Open to SA-based independent theatre-makers.
Applications close 11 March; learn more and apply.

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre 2025-26 Exhibition (Vic)

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre is currently seeking proposals for exhibitions between October 2025 and October 2026. Artists and curators are invited to submit ideas for group and solo exhibitions, or creative projects suitable for presentation in the galleries of Bundoora Homestead Art Centre. In 2025-2026, successful projects will be provided with artist and curator fees, be supported with exhibition space, curatorial advice and marketing free of charge.
Applications close 13 March; learn more and apply.

Victorian Honour Roll of Women

Nominations for the 2025 Victorian Honour Roll of Women are open, calling on Victorians to nominate someone inspirational to join the Roll. Victorians are encouraged to nominate women from all walks of life, cultural backgrounds and age groups to be recognised across four categories – Local Champion, Change Agent, Emerging Leader and Trailblazer. The Honour Roll celebrates their achievements across fields such as social justice, health science, research, arts, environment, law, media and education. 
Nominations close 16 March; learn more and nominate.

Professional development

Editor-in-Residence (Vic)

un Projects is seeking an un Extended Editor-in-Residence for 2025, who will take part in a paid 10-month program to commission reviews, critiques, profiles or conversations by arts writers to be published on un Extended, un Project’s online publishing initiative. The Editor-in-Residence will also facilitate, present and help curate one un Talks public program. The opportunity is intended to support early career arts writers, editors, artists or publishing enthusiasts to develop content that critically engages with exhibitions and events from the small-to-medium scale arts sector and a focus on important early career and underrepresented artists. 
Applications close 18 February; learn more and apply.

State Library Victoria 2025 Fellowships Program

Fourteen fellowships worth $195,000 are on offer in 2025 from State Library Victoria, open to artists, creatives, performers, writers, musicians and academics who live anywhere in Australia. Library fellows receive funding, a dedicated office in the dome and access to a specialist librarian to navigate the State Collection. No particular experience or credentials are required to apply.
Applications close 21 March; learn more and apply.

Deep Creek Residency Fellowship 2025 (SA)

Now in its fourth year, the residency offers the winning South Australian writer time away to write and the opportunity to work on a manuscript with a mentor, this year it is the award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer Favel Parrett. In addition, the winner also gets a consultation with Ultimo Press. The fellowship is open to writers of adult literary fiction, memoir, biography, autobiography, poetry collections and narrative non-fiction. The recipient must be able to stay at Deep Creek from 3-10 November 2025.
Applications close 1 April; learn more and apply.

Want more? Visit our Opportunities page for more open competitions, prizes, EOIs and call-outs.

This week’s winners

Visual arts

A student from RMIT University has taken out the GradFoto 2024 Award of $1000, as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (23 August to 19 October). Lê Nguyên Phương has been awarded for his photographic series, Vở ô ly. Judge Alejandro Acín says the series “masterfully intertwines politics, culture and personal narratives… His work transcends individual images, offering depth and resonance”. Highly Commended were Emily Raffaele (RMIT University), Harry Merriman (National Art School) and Jesse Pretorius (RMIT University), while Monika Makour from Whitehouse Institute of Design took out People’s Choice Award of $500.

James Nguyen has been selected as the ANAT Synapse 2025 artist in residency. Nguyen will work with Dr John Gould from the University of Newcastle on collaborative project, Diasporic Amphibians. The residency will explore the biological, social and evolutionary impact of frog communities that have become geographically separated and isolated. Focusing on the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frog, the project draws parallels between the survival of this species in the contaminated waters of Homebush Bay and the resilience of Southeast Asian migrant communities who resettled in the surrounding suburbs after the Vietnam War, a period marked by the widespread use of Agent Orange and its lingering impact.

Performing arts

Lucy Guerin Inc welcomed its 2025 cohort of Moving Forward Residents: Ben Hurley, Alex Dobson, Jack Bannerman, Yuiko Masukawa and Prue Lang. The cohort will be supported to develop their choreographic practices and create new works. At the culmination of their in-studio time, Moving Forward Residents will present a showing of their work or share part of their artistic process through a workshop, talk or publication. Learn more about each of the projects.

Celebrated pianist Jayson Gillham has been named the 2024 Limelight Australian Artist of the Year, winning both the Critics’ Choice and People’s Choice awards. This is the first time an Australian artist has secured both honours in the same year. Gillham says, “To be chosen as the 2024 Limelight Australian Artist of the Year, by both the public and music critics, comes with an incredible weight of meaning for me. This recognition holds special significance after a year that tested me in many ways, and I am deeply touched and buoyed by this show of support from both the critical community and the wider public.” People’s Choice Award for International Artist of 2024 is German countertenor, Andreas Scholl, while Critics’ Choice went to British tenor Allan Clayton.

All

UNSW’s School of the Arts & Media (SAM) has awarded its 2024/25 Alumni Creative Residency to two alumni artists, Alexandra Tálamo and Betty Grumble. The residency provides recipients with access to UNSW facilities and expert support to develop innovative creative projects. Tálamo will develop a multidisciplinary work exploring “the ghostly appearances of the Australian military on university campuses”, combining movement, installation and text to map the historical intersections between military presence and academic spaces. Meanwhile, Grumble will create BEAST, described as a ‘psychedelic’ fusion of “ritual theatre, storytelling, song, dance and stand-up comedy” that investigates themes of healing and embodiment.

Creative Australia has announced the latest recipients of investment through the Australian Cultural Fund (ACF) boost matched funding initiative. An investment of $160,000 will support 32 creative projects, including Three Quarters Documentary by Article One, which centres on a group of men in a small regional community seeking answers as to why men are struggling with mental health, Secrets of Dawn Regional Tour exhibition by Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation that explores the impact of New South Wales Aborigines Projection Act and Caffeine Fiend by Charlee Watt, a theatrical cabaret about coffee culture and addiction.

Shortlisted and finalists

Four authors have been shortlisted for the 2025 MUD Literary Prize, they are: The Degenerates by Raden
Richardson; The End of Everything Before It by Finegan Kruckemeyer; Translations by Jumaana Abdu; and Why Do Horses Run? by Cameron Stewart. Adelaide Writers’ Week Director and prize judge Louise Adler says, “As readers of these novels we are taken from rural Australia, to the backstreets of Mumbai, and then to the Arctic seas across a large canvas of experiences and remarkable characters. This astonishing variety is indicative of the richness of writing in Australia today.” The winner will be announced on 3 March, the week before Adelaide Writers’ Week commences.

PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival (22 February to 8 March) has announced the 2025 finalists for the National Designer Award x David Jones, supported by Australia Post, and National Graduate Showcase x Emporium Melbourne. Recognising designers in their first eight years of business, the National Designer Award finalists include Alix Higgins, Amelia Mather (Boteh), Amy Lawrance, Anna Pipkorn (Lovaan Studios), Christopher Hrysanidis, Isabelle Hellyer (All is a Gentle Spring), Jackie Galleghan (Madre Natura), Jude Ng (Jude), Liandra Gaykamangu (Liandra) and Saskia Baur-Schmid (Hyph-n). National Graduate Showcase finalists include: Alannah Walton, Anjali Tulpule, Cuong Nguyen, Ethan Bergersen, Frank Taplin, Indigo Stuart, Joanna Youn (Joanna Lee and Changmin Yun), Madeleine Triggs, Marko Plavsic, Suzaan Stander and Wilson Jedd Adams. This year, the National Graduate Showcase has added a Community Choice vote, with runners up being Alexandra Pennell, Ke Zhang and Nam Tran.

The photo depicts a young woman with fair skin walking on a suburban street in a pale, flowy garment.
Garment by National Graduate Showcase finalist Alannah Walton (UTS). Photo: Supplied.

The 2025 shortlist for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards have been revealed, featuring 36 writers who are now in the running for $317,000 worth of prizes. Despite disparate settings and genres, shared themes of grief, morality and reckoning emerged from across the shortlisted titles in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Award for Indigenous Writing, Children’s Literature, Writing for Young Adults and this year’s Unpublished Manuscript contenders. Shortlisted titles include The Burrow by Melanie Cheng, Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane, Woo Woo by Ella Baxter, Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy by Clare Wright, Black Witness by Amy McQuire, Detachable Penis: a Queer Legal Saga by Sam Elkin, The Medusa Situation by Gabiann Marin and more. Explore the shortlist.

Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.

Celina Lei is ArtsHub's Content Manager. She has previously worked across global art hubs in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York in both the commercial art sector and art criticism. She took part in drafting NAVA’s revised Code of Practice - Art Fairs and was the project manager of ArtsHub’s diverse writers initiative, Amplify Collective. Celina is based in Naarm/Melbourne. Instagram @lleizy_